Is UFC 194 Conor McGregor’s biggest gamble yet?

“Vegas was and is a hard town that will make you pay for your inability to restrain your desires... If you have a weakness, Las Vegas will punish you" 

Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo Junior were still in their teens when Rothman, one of the the pre-eminent observers of the modern west of the US, penned that observation.

Yet it is the collective inability of the reluctant plumber from Crumlin and the reluctant bricklayer from Manaus to restrain their desires that has led them here to Las Vegas, the neon metropolis that was the focus of so much of the late Rothman’s life work.